Even if the belligerence seems to be established as fact, still its concession in this age of Christian light must be impossible, except under some temporary aberration, which, for the honor of England and the welfare of Humanity, should…
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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We are challenged to the defence of country, and in this sacred cause to crush Slavery.
Slavery began the combat, staking life, and determined to rule or die.
We need a song like “Scots who have with Wallace bled.” The cause is greater now than then.
We need words like those of Luther, “half battles.” Ours is another Reformation and another Revolution.
The attempted revolution for Slavery we meet by a counter revolution for Liberty.
That we may continue freemen, there must be no slaves; and thus our own security is linked with the redemption of a race.
Blessed lot, amidst the harshness of war, to wield the arms and deal the blows under which the monster will surely fall!
The battle is mighty; for into Slavery has entered the Spirit of Evil.
It is persistent; for such a gathered wickedness, concentrated, aroused, and maddened, must have a tenacity of life which will not yield at once.
That the whole war is contained in Slavery may be seen not only in the acts of the National Government, but also in the confessions of Rebel Slavemongers.
Therefore, in battling against the Rebellion, we battle against Slavery.
Freedom is the growing inspiration of our armies and the just inscription of our banners.
Such a war is not a war of subjugation, but a war of liberation, to save the Republic from a petty oligarchy of taskmasters, and to rescue four millions of human beings from cruel oppression.
Not to subjugate, but to liberate, is the object of our Holy War.
And yet British statesmen, forgetting for the moment all moral distinctions, forgetting God, who will not be forgotten, gravely announce that our cause must fail.
Alas! individual wickedness is too often successful; but a pretended nation, suckled in wickedness and boasting its wickedness, a new Sodom, with all the guilt of the old, waiting to be blasted, and yet, in barefaced effrontery, openly…
In this age of light, and in countries boasting civilization, there can be no place for its barbarous plenipotentiaries.
Even if the Republic were less strong, yet I am glad to believe that the Rebellion must fail from the essential impossibility of any such wicked success.
Behind our blockade there would be a moral blockade; behind our armies there would be the aroused judgment of the civilized world.
Even on economic grounds, it were better that this war should proceed rather than recognize any partition, which, beginning with humiliation, must involve the perpetuation of armaments and break out again in blood.
But there is something worse than waste of money; it is waste of character.
But a peace founded on the killing of a king is not so bad as a peace founded on the killing of Liberty; nor can the saddest scenes of such a peace be so sad as the daily life legalized by Slavery.
A queen on the scaffold is not so pitiful a sight as a woman on the auction-block.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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